Mike Resnick - The Other Teddy Roosevelts

Roosevelt nodded to the bartender. “And I’ll take a cup of coffee.”

“Ain’t got no coffee, Mr. Roosevelt,” said the bartender. “How about a cup of tea?”

“That’ll do,” said Roosevelt, walking over to a table and sitting down.

“Now we’re friends again, what made you decide I ain’t the Ripper?” asked Shrank.

“Your education.”

“What education?” laughed Shrank. “I ain’t never been to school in my life!”

“ That education,” said Roosevelt. “If you killed someone, could you find the spleen?”

“What’s a spleen?”

“How about the pancreas?”

“Never heard of them.”

“Point to where you think my lungs are.”

Shrank pointed.

“There’s your answer,” said Roosevelt. “The Ripper knows where those organs are.”

“How do you know I’m not lying?” said Shrank.

“Where would you have learned?”

“Maybe I read it in a book.”

“Can you read?”

Suddenly Shrank laughed aloud. “Not a word!”

Roosevelt smiled. “One more reason why you’re not the Ripper.”

“One more ?” repeated Shrank. “What was the first?”

“I’ve seen you get winded walking three blocks. The Ripper ran for at least half a mile last night and eluded some very fit pursuers.”

“Then why’d you come in asking questions like that?”

“I’m just being thorough.”

“I thunk we was friends — mates, you might say,” said Shrank.

“We are. But if you were the Ripper, that wouldn’t stop me from putting you away.”

“At least you give a damn. I can’t say as much for the rest of ‘em.”

“You mean the police?” responded Roosevelt. “You misjudge them. They’ve got hundreds of men working on the case.”

“Only because the press keeps goading ‘em,” said Shrank. “But they don’t care about us or Whitechapel. They’ll catch the Ripper and then cross us off the map again.”

“What do you think would make them do something about Whitechapel?” asked Roosevelt.

“It’ll sound balmy — but as long as Saucy Jack’s around, they pay attention to us. Maybe having him ain’t such a bad thing after all.” Shrank laughed bitterly. “He slices up another 40 or 50 women, they might clean this place up and turn it into Hyde Park.”

“No,” said the bartender with a smile. “Mayfair.”

“You really think so?” asked Roosevelt.

“Nobody paid no attention to us before the Ripper, Mr. Roosevelt, and that’s a fact,” said the bartender.

“That’s a very interesting outlook,” said Roosevelt. “But I’ll keep trying to catch him anyway.”

“Maybe old Jack is really your pal Hughes,” offered Shrank. “Y’know, he’s always the first one at the body.”

Roosevelt shook his head. “I was with him when the second woman was killed last night.”

“It’s a puzzle, all right.”

“There are a lot of puzzles in this case,” said Roosevelt.

“You mean, besides who is he?” said Shrank.

“Yes,” said Roosevelt. He frowned again. For example, he thought, why would he have walked off with Catherine Eddowes ’ kidney?

It took 16 days for Roosevelt to get his answer. Then Hughes summoned him and showed him a crudely scrawled message that had been sent to George Lusk, the head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.

“From Hell, Mr. Lusk —

Sir, I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman,

prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was

very nise I may send you the bloody knif that too it out

if you only wate a whil longer

signed Catch me when yu can Mishter Lusk”

— Jack the Ripper

October 16, 1888

“Well, at least now we know why the kidney was missing,” said Hughes. A look of disgust crossed his face. “Do you really think he ate it?”

Roosevelt shrugged. “Who knows? He’s certainly capable of eating it.” He stared at the letter. “Does the handwriting match the previous messages?”

Hughes nodded. “It’s the same man, all right.”

Roosevelt lowered his head in thought for a moment. “All right,” he said. “Here’s what you must do. Make copies of that letter and give it to every newspaper in London.”

“We can’t do that, Theodore! There would be widespread panic.”

“I hope so.”

“I beg your pardon!” said Hughes heatedly.

“Try to understand, John,” said Roosevelt. “Everyone in Whitechapel has been aware of the Ripper for more than a month. Prostitutes know that they’re his quarry, and yet they continue to ply their trade and put themselves at risk. Maybe if they read this, if they get a brief peek into the mind of this madman, we can keep them off the streets until he’s apprehended.”

“Keep prostitutes off the streets?” laughed a nearby policeman. “You might as well try to keep the sun from rising.”

“It’s that, or prepare yourselves for more murders.”

“It’s not my decision to make,” replied Hughes. “You’ve been working on this case at my request, and I’ve been your sole contact, so you can be forgiven for thinking that I’m in charge…but in point of fact we have more than 500 police officers working around the clock on the Ripper murders. I’ll have to go through channels before we can get it published.”

“What if I just took it to the papers, and said that I hadn’t told you what I’d planned?”

“You’d be on the first ship back to America, and I doubt that your presence would ever be tolerated in England again.”

That’s no great loss in a land that worships royalty and allows something like Whitechapel to exist, thought Roosevelt. Aloud he said, “All right, John — but hurry! The sooner this is made known to the press, the better.”

Hughes picked up the letter and stared at it. “I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“So will we all,” replied Roosevelt.

Nothing happened.

A day passed, then a week, then three. The police again began suggesting that the Ripper might have been killed by some other member of the criminal class — there were enough stabbings and bludgeonings in Whitechapel and on the waterfront to write fini to a dozen Rippers.

Even Roosevelt relaxed his guard. He spent a day birding in the Cotswolds. He made a speech to the Royal Zoological Society, and another to Parliament. He found the time to write three articles and more than one hundred letters.

And still, he couldn’t rid himself of the nagging feeling that this was the calm before the storm, and that he possessed some small but vital piece of the puzzle that could help him prevent another murder.

On the evening of November 8, he sat down to write a letter to his wife.

My Dearest Edith:

It has been almost six weeks since the fiend last struck, and most of the authorities here have convinced themselves that he is dead, possibly by his own hand, possibly murdered. I don’t agree. There was no pattern or regularity to his prior killings. The first and second were separated by nine days, the second and third by 22 days, the third and fourth by no more than an hour. Since there has been no pattern, I don’t see how they can conclude that he’s broken one.

As I mentioned in previous letters, some of the police still lean toward Prince Albert Victor, which is simply beyond the realm of possibility. All of their other suspects also seem to come from the upper classes: a doctor, a lawyer, a shipbuilder. They mean well, the London Metropolitan Police, but they simply lack American practicality as they go about this most important and onerous task.